Born in 1966, Ara Aprikian is a graduate of ENSAE (the French National School of Statistics and Business Administration) and of the Politics, Economics and Social Sciences faculty at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (“Sciences Po”). 
He began his career in 1990 as a research officer at Horizon Média, a media buying agency. He moved to Médiamétrie in 1993, where he continued to work in research.
It was in 1995 that Ara Aprikian joined the TF1 Group in the Marketing department, initially as a research officer before being promoted in 1998 to Deputy Director of Marketing and Programme Planning. Three years later he took over responsibility for Gameshows and Reality TV, before becoming Director of Gameshows, Variety and Entertainment in 2003.
In 2005, he moved to the pay-TV group Canal+, where he headed up the Entertainment unit before launching the Group’s D8 and D17 freeview channels in October 2012. He then became Executive Vice President of the Canal+ group with responsibility for freeview operations (D8, D17 and itélé), and Chairman of D8 and D17.
In September 2015, he founded Massoco, an audiovisual strategy consultancy. In October 2015, the TF1 Group commissioned Ara Aprikian to carry out a consultancy assignment on the editorial positioning of the Group’s free-to-air channels.
In February 2016, Ara Aprikian was appointed Executive Vice President, Content. He is responsible for all television programmes, acquisitions, production and broadcasting. The objective: to encourage the creation of new content, and to promote the distribution of that content on the Group’s TV channels, and across the MYTF1 platform and all digital media.
In September 2019, Ara Aprikian took over responsibility for the newly-formed Music and Live Shows business unit; in addition, the subsidiary TF1 Films Production now reports directly to him.